“Well done, boys; good process,” referee Simon Hooper said to his team, praising them for a smooth VAR review as he restarted play after Liverpool‘s Luis DÃaz had been flagged offside at Tottenham Hotspur in September 2023.
It couldn’t have been further from the truth. Hooper was oblivious to the huge error that had unfolded in the VAR room; Diaz was onside, and the goal should have been given.
Hooper’s words continue to haunt Premier League referees, defining the reputation of the video assistant referee in English football.
It has been almost a year since that incident, and Hooper’s phrasing to this day is used across social media as a stick with which to beat English referees. Anthony Taylor, Michael Oliver and Stuart Attwell couldn’t even escape it during Euro 2024. An English official makes a contentious decision, then comes a flood of replies: “Well done, boys; good process.”
Changing such negative opinions will take a monumental effort from Howard Webb, the chief refereeing officer, because the battle for hearts and minds seems lost. Fans have complete antipathy towards VAR built up over five seasons of stop-start football with little tangible progress; high-profile mistakes have eroded trust.
Can perception be changed with ‘referee’s call’?
Webb and the Premier League are desperate to shift the conversation, to move on from constant referee criticism and concentrate on football. That’s easier said than done; you cannot control the perception of players, managers and fans. New season, new hope?
“Some of the criticism we get around VAR is simply because people don’t like the final outcome,” Webb said. “I think people expected when this came in, they would always agree with the final outcome. That’s simply not possible. That’s not a position we can ever get to.
“I think what we can do is really focus on what the VAR was always meant for. It was meant for those clear situations that live large in the memory. It wasn’t meant to referee the game on small touches or little contacts and all those things that have always created debate and discussion.
“But if people are going to criticise us because a penalty that’s given doesn’t change, even though it’s one that splits opinion, then we’re never going to win.”
Fans, of course, have heard this time and again but little seems to change. The Premier League certainly hasn’t helped itself with an information vacuum on matchdays, so detailed live updates of VAR reviews on social media and on the big screens in grounds are a step forward. But it’s another sign of how slow progress has been that it has taken until 2024 to happen.
The Premier League thinks another solution is to get away from “clear and obvious,” accepting that such a standard has always been too difficult to define. There’s now a push to use “referee’s call,” putting the focus on the decision primarily on the field, rather than the role of the VAR.
Yet nothing is actually changing. It’s still going to rely on the quality of decision-making to the Premier League’s exceptionally high bar.
“We’re trying to manage people’s expectations around the way this works and what it does and doesn’t do,” Webb explained. “We felt that people might understand that the ‘referees’ call’ really means something and that the baseline for the judgment the VAR is making is against that on-field call.”
VAR reviews must get quicker and slicker
One major issue with VAR in the Premier League has been the speed of reviews. VAR was much quicker and slicker at Euro 2024, which you’d expect when all games have semiautomated offside, expanded video teams and only the very best officials from around Europe. The tournament showed that fast VAR reviews are received more positively and cause less controversy.
Yet the Premier League’s refereeing teams seemed to take longer than everyone else in certain situations. Attwell’s check on Netherlands‘ disallowed goal against France, ruled out for offside on the field by Taylor, should have been efficient but took two minutes and 47 seconds.
“We’ve got the lowest intervention rate of any of the major leagues already, at 0.29 per game, so the frustration must come from something else. It must come from the time that’s taken. It must come from us looking at things for too long,” Webb said.
“Don’t overanalyse situations, don’t be too forensic. Let things jump off the screen when you look at it and say, ‘Thank goodness we’ve got VAR, we can rectify that immediately.’ Put it right and then get on with the game. Everything we’re doing at the moment is around trying to get to that position.”
“If people are going to criticise us because a penalty that’s given doesn’t change, even though it’s one that splits opinion, then we’re never going to win.”
Howard Webb
Supporters still aren’t being heard
If the changes don’t result in significant improvement, anger amongst supporters is only going to increase. Scandinavia has shown there’s a way to oppose VAR, with Sweden’s fan-owned clubs rejecting its introduction earlier this year.
The watershed moment will come if a league gets rid of VAR, and there’s a real chance it will happen in Norway. There have been a series of protests and opposition across clubs, culminating in a barrage of fish cakes and tennis balls that forced a game between Rosenborg and Lillestrom to be postponed last month. The Norwegian Eliteserien is undertaking a full review of VAR, with a vote on its future set for March.
A major league going down that path seems a long way off, though if fans continue to be ignored perhaps they will follow Norway’s lead. It looked like the situation could reach a head in May when Wolves triggered a vote to get VAR scrapped. It failed spectacularly, defeated 19-1. Premier League clubs didn’t consult the fans, though, and it was those in the boardroom who backed VAR by such a landslide.
Wolves filed their complaint just six weeks after clubs had unanimously voted to bring in semiautomated offside, complete with a long-term contract with a new technology provider. Although not ready for the start of the season, semiautomated offside will make many decisions quicker and, crucially, take most of the process out of the hands of the VAR. The possibility of errors is vastly reduced, and the perception of human error is gone.
Referees lag behind those in other top leagues
Technology is one aspect, but the only effective solution is better, more consistent decision-making — which must come through improved refereeing. Professional Game Match Officials Ltd. (PGMOL) and the Premier League might believe standards are no lower than before, but Oliver and Taylor remain the only English referees on UEFA’s elite list. France, Germany, Italy and Spain each have three representatives.
John Brooks, who was statistically the best referee in the Premier League last season, has been promoted to UEFA’s second tier — but Craig Pawson has been demoted to the third level.
England lags far behind the other top leagues in those two bands. France, Germany and Italy have six referees, with Spain and Romania on five. England has only four referees, the same as Poland and Portugal. If refereeing standards haven’t fallen, then they aren’t moving with the times.
“I wouldn’t say that standards of officiating are lower now than there were before, but I would absolutely accept that we should have more at the very top table of UEFA,” Webb said. “It’s taken our officials too long to get to the top, there’s been pretty rigid systems in place in terms of when and how you can get promoted. Those systems are being torn apart.
“We had eight referees last year work on the Premier League who weren’t select group one [listed for Premier League appointments]; I think that’s never been seen before. So opportunities are being given earlier. The first one of those has been promoted [full time] to the Premier League this year, Sam Barrott.”
One of the long-term measures of Webb’s plan to reshape the perception of refereeing, with all the resources at his disposal, will be to get English officials on a par with those from the other top leagues.
Webb probably has a greater chance of achieving this than winning over the fans who have grown to despise VAR.
The new campaign gets underway, as it always does, with new buzzwords and lots of promises, yet VAR hasn’t yet moved forward. Few will be confident this season will be any different.
